In her seventh letter, Louise describes the log cabin Fayette acquired for her on the sparsely populated Indian Bar, upriver from Rich Bar but within walking distance:. Enter my dear; you are perfectly welcome; besides, we could not keep you out if we would, as there is not even a latch on the canvas door…. The room into which we have just entered is about twenty feet square.
It is lined over the top with white cotton cloth…. The sides are hung with a gaudy chintz, which I consider a perfect marvel of calico printing. The fireplace is built of stones and mud, the chimney finished off with alternate layers of rough sticks…. The mantle piece…is formed of a beam of wood, covered with strips of tin procured from cans, upon which still remain in black hieroglyphics, the names of the different eatables which they formerly contained….
I suppose that it would be no more than civil to call a hole two feet square in one side of the room, a window, although it is as yet guiltless of glass. The path between Indian Bar, where the Clapp cabin stood, and Rich Bar, where Fayette had his office, was somewhat precarious. Footbridges across the river were felled logs still wrapped in bark and moss.
Large rocks and countless mining pits, 6 or more feet deep, with accompanying gravel heaps, had to be skirted. One pit was only a few feet from their cabin door. Over the entrance…is painted in red capitals…the name of the great Humboldt spelt without the d. This is the only hotel in this vicinity, and as there is a really excellent bowling alley attached to it, and the bar-room has a floor on which the miners can dance, and, above all, a cook who can play the violin, it is very popular.
But the clinking of glasses, and the swaggering air of some of the drinkers, reminds us that it is no place for a lady. So was panning for gold. She also discovered it was hard, dirty work, and she did not repeat the experiment, not for years. But she did observe and write about the gold miners. As there are no State laws upon the subject, each mining community is permitted to make its own. There are many ways of evading the above law.
The laborer…can jump the claim of the very man who employs him…[but] generally prefers to receive the six dollars per diem, of which he is sure…[rather than] running the risk of a claim not proving valuable…. The labor of excavation is extremely difficult, on account of the immense rocks…[in] the soil.
Of course, no man can work out a claim alone. Some companies discarded top dirt and chose instead to hunt for gold in bedrock crevices. The people populating Rich Bar and Indian Bar varied as much as their houses. Louise describes Beckwourth in her eighth letter:. He is fifty years of age, perhaps, and speaks several languages to perfection. As he has been a wanderer for many years and for a long time was a principal chief of the Crow Indians, his adventures are extremely interesting.
He chills the blood of the green young miners, who, unacquainted with the arts of war and subjugation, congregate around him [to hear] the cold-blooded manner in which he relates the Indian fights that he has been engaged in. Unlike Jim Beckwourth, most men at Rich and Indian bars could not speak more than one language fluently, although some Americans seem to have tried.
Unfortunately, the humor in such misunderstandings was often overlooked. Yet things remained relatively peaceful through the winter of In February , provisions were becoming scarce. The rancheros who had been driving beef herds into the valley and the mule drivers who brought in onions, potatoes, butter and coffee could not get through the deep snow that covered the hills surrounding the bars. So the Clapps and their neighbors lived for three months on flour, dark ham, salted mackerel, and rusty pork.
And when the snow finally melted, spring floods commenced, sweeping away flume machinery, log bridges, long toms, cradles, a newly finished sawmill and several men. By mid-May, the waters calmed down and fresh provisions arrived. So did a large number of mostly American newcomers. Meanwhile, Mexicans at the mines expressed growing frustration over the lack of justice where they were concerned.
In her 16th letter, Louise writes sardonically:. A few evenings ago, a Spaniard was stabbed by an American. It seems that the presumptuous foreigner had the impertinence to ask very humbly and meekly of that most noble representative of the stars and stripes, if the latter would pay him a few dollars which he had owed him for some time.
His high mightiness, the Yankee, was not going to put up with any such impertinence, and the poor Spaniard received, for answer, several inches of cold steel in his breast, which inflicted a very dangerous wound. Nothing was done and very little was said about this atrocious affair. This has caused nearly all the Spaniards [Californios] to immigrate upon Indian Bar. On the Fourth of July, tensions between Californios and Americans exploded.
While Dr. Clapp joined other sober Americans in celebrating Independence Day with speeches, poetry, music and dancing at the Empire on Rich Bar, drunken celebrants made the rounds at Indian Bar. Louis Clapp wrote about it in her 19th letter:. He said…Domingo — a tall, majestic-looking Spaniard, a perfect type of the novelistic bandit of Old Spain — had stabbed Tom Somers, a young Irishman, but a naturalized citizen of the United States,…[and while] brandishing threateningly the long bloody knife with which he had inflicted the wound upon his victim…[had paraded] up and down the street unmolested.
It seems that when Tom Somers fell, the Americans, being unarmed, were seized with a sudden panic and fled. There was a rumor unfounded, as it afterwards proved to the effect that the Spaniards had on this day conspired to kill all the Americans on the river.
In a few moments, however, the latter rallied and made a rush at the murderer, who immediately plunged into the river and swam across to Missouri Bar; eight or shots were fired at him…not one of which hit him. In the meanwhile,…Spaniards who…thought that the Americans had arisen against them…barricaded themselves in a drinking saloon, determined to defend themselves against the massacre which was fully expected would follow….
In the bake shop, which stands next to our cabin, young Tom Somers lay straightened for the grave…while over his dead body a Spanish woman was weeping and moaning in the most piteous and heart-rending manner. The Rich Barians, who had heard a most exaggerated account of the rising of the Spaniards against the Americans, armed with rifles, pistols, clubs, dirks, etc.
Each one added fuel to his rage by crowding into the little bakery, to gaze upon the blood-bathed bosom of the victim…. The more sensible and sober of the Americans partly quieted the angry crowd. Still, Fayette Clapp wanted his wife to join two other women who lived on a nearby hill, where things would be safer should a serious fight erupt.
We three women, left entirely alone, seated ourselves upon a log overlooking the strange scene below. The Bar was a sea of heads, bristling with guns, rifles, and clubs…. All at once, we were startled by the firing of a gun, and…saw a man [being] led into the log cabin, while another was carried, apparently lifeless, into a Spanish drinking saloon….
Luckily for our nerves, a benevolent individual…came and told us what had happened. It seems that an Englishman, the owner of a house of the vilest description, a person, who is said to have been the primary cause of all the troubles of the day, attempted to force his way through the line of armed men which had been formed at each side of the street…. In his drunken fury, he tried to wrest a gun from one of them, which being accidentally discharged in the struggle, inflicted a severe wound upon a Mr.
Oxley and shattered in the most dreadful manner the thigh of Sr. This frightful accident recalled the people to their senses…. They elected a Vigilance Committee and authorized persons to go…arrest the suspected Spaniards. The first act of the Committee was to try a Mejicana who had been foremost in the fray. She has always worn male attire, and on this occasion, armed with a pair of pistols, she fought like a very fury. Luckily, inexperienced in the use of fire-arms, she wounded no one.
She was sentenced to leave the Bar by day-light…. The next day, the Committee tried five or six Spaniards…. Two of them were sentenced to be whipped, the remainder to leave the Bar that evening; the property of all to be confiscated…. Oh Mary! Imagine my anguish when I heard the first blow fall upon those wretched men. I had never thought that I should be compelled to hear such fearful sounds, and, although I immediately buried my head in my shawl, nothing can efface from memory the disgust and horror….
One of these unhappy persons was a very gentlemanly young Spaniard, who implored for death in the most moving terms. Finding all his entreaties disregarded, he swore a most solemn oath, that he would murder every American that he should chance to meet alone, and as he is a man of the most dauntless courage, and rendered desperate by a burning sense of disgrace…he will doubtless keep his word.
Not long after the floggings, Louise reported that a hanging and an attempted suicide had occurred at the mines. The first involved a man accused of murdering and robbing his employer.
Oxen were often used instead of horses to pull the wagons because of their great strength and endurance. Normally the people walked, to save the animals as much as possible. The trip took about three or four months. Getting the gold The hope of striking it rich by mining gold in California or silver in Nevada continued to attract settlers to the West for decades. The picture below shows gold miners running gravel from a stream bed over a device called a sluice.
Water from a stream washes the gravel and gold particles across the sluice. The heavy gold particles get caught on a rough sheet of metal along the bottom of the sluice. Underground mining for gold and silver After the gold in the rivers and streams was taken, things became much more difficult.
Mining required heavy equipment and crews of underground miners. Below is a photo of a gold mine in Colorado. Notice the candle used for light inside the mine shaft.
Silver mines in Nevada looked very similar, and drew thousands of people looking for work. The Great Plains. A successful Nebraska homestead The photo below shows a family farm in Nebraska in The windmill is for pumping water. The walls of the house are made of sod. Sod is the term for the top layer of the soil, with the roots of the grass holding it together. The early settlers on the Great Plains used sod to make their homes because trees for wood were so scarce.
Advances in technology - The Transcontinental Railroad Technological advances also helped settle the West. The Transcontinental Railroad is a good example of this. Two different companies built the line, helped with money from the federal government. The part shown in red was built by the Central Pacific Railroad company. More often than not, whites actually worked the mines while Chinese or Mexicans served as muckers, who loaded and dumped the ore cars, or as simple laborers taking away surface rubble.
Such unskilled jobs paid considerably less than the wages miners received. On those parts of the mining frontier where Chinese and Mexican workers were not common, another hierarchy of labor based on ethnicity emerged, with Americans and Irish working as the miners while recent arrivals from Italy, Greece, or the Balkans took on the menial tasks. Previous The Cattle Kingdom. Next Industrial America. Removing book from your Reading List will also remove any bookmarked pages associated with this title.
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